Bubble geek

I have never been so excited to see a nondescript aluminum canister of compressed air. Even its torn, faded stickers are creating a rather alarming urge to clap my hands and giggle like a little girl.

My name is Janelle and I’m the resident SCUBA guide. My last name is Baarspul but given that it’s Dutch and convoluted I’ll never expect it to be remembered or spelled correctly (even I was misspelling the thing until embarrassingly late in my schooling). Though I also lead hikes, kayak trips, whitewater rafting, and some snowshoe journeys, SCUBA is the sport that gets me to geek out the most, so it’s the main one that I’ll claim.

The canister in question was just donated to our burgeoning supply of equipment, and it means that we now are nearing completion on our loaner set of gear. SCUBA is a highly specialized sport (and debatable as a “sport”, but I consider anything that makes you carry 40-50 lbs. of awkward gear over often rocky terrain, or kick into an oncoming current for 20 minutes, or use skill to maintain the perfect level of buoyancy over a delicate wreck… any of these I consider enough to at least give it consideration) and it’s been a challenge at times to convince interested parties to pay the $150-200 to get certified as an Open Water Diver, only to then have to either rent gear for $55-75 for a 2-dive day or buy gear for thousands of dollars. Now that we have extra gear, we can encourage those who have let their certification lapse to retry diving as well as offer loaners to those who have just been certified (woo!).

My history with diving began in the late 1990’s, when I almost killed myself snorkeling off of the coast of Cancun. How can you kill yourself snorkeling, you might ask, when all you do is float at the top of the ocean and breathe through a tube? Try showing an adventurous woman a 3-4 foot diameter tunnel in the coral about 10 feet underwater, through which she can see sunlight at the other end filtering through a mass of bobbing tropical fish. The sad thing is that I made it through the tunnel 3 times, holding a deep breath and kicking like a madwoman while gently pushing aside the increasingly irritated fishy residents. It was the 4th time that did me in, when I slowed down to look at the sides of the tunnel and floated up, catching my fin heel strap on the jagged roof of the cave. Long seconds of struggling finally freed me up enough to pass through, but I honestly feared for my life for a moment and never forgot the warm water pressing in. Oddly enough, instead of creating a phobia or causing me to avoid the open ocean, that experience inspired me to find a way to stay longer underwater and more thoroughly explore that very inhospitable environment.

I knew I wanted to SCUBA dive - the question wasn’t how, but rather “with whom?” SCUBA is a team sport and requires the heavy use of a buddy system to make sure that safety measures are covered and that an alternate air source is nearby in case of emergency. My friends were fine with hiking and kayaking, but as soon as I asked them to think about spending the money for certification they suddenly developed swimming issues and mysterious inner-ear trouble. When I joined Mars Hill Church and noticed that they had an Outdoors group, I knew that certainly SOMEONE in the bunch had to share my aquatic love. Lucky for me, there was! Unlucky for me, the divers in their group were all no longer active. Lucky (again) for me, the group leader saw my drive (obsession? naah, we’ll stick with “drive”) and let me start up a brand new SCUBA group. Our first meeting? At the dive shop, for our certification class. I was certified along with them, and have been leading trips monthly ever since.

More stories about life amongst the bubbles to come!